Deep in the base of the brain, a cascade of events including oxidative damage and inflammation can kill neurons, resulting in the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

An international team of researchers has now developed a technique that might be used to prevent this cell death. They engineer a patient’s own immune cells to carry protective stowaway molecules, and these Trojan cells can help prevent neuron death by delivering treatments across the blood-brain barrier — a layer of cellular structures that blocks most molecules from passing into the brain. The researchers have so far tested the approach successfully in mice. Read more...

Deep in the base of the brain, a cascade of events including oxidative damage and inflammation can kill neurons, resulting in the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

An international team of researchers has now developed a technique that might be used to prevent this cell death. They engineer a patient’s own immune cells to carry protective stowaway molecules, and these Trojan cells can help prevent neuron death by delivering treatments across the blood-brain barrier — a layer of cellular structures that blocks most molecules from passing into the brain. The researchers have so far tested the approach successfully in mice. Read more...

Governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, according to a leading economist and academicSimon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.

“There is going to be a big political backlash,” Johnson said on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Mass., last Thursday. “And the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.” Read more...

Governments and established financial institutions are likely to launch a campaign to quash the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, according to a leading economist and academicSimon Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, expects Bitcoin to face political pressure and aggressive lobbying from big banks because of its disruptive nature.

“There is going to be a big political backlash,” Johnson said on stage at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Mass., last Thursday. “And the question is whether the people behind those currencies are ready for that and have their own political strategy.” Read more...

In a study published last week at PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania examined the language used in 75,000 Facebook profiles. They found differences across ages, genders and certain personality traits. This allowed the group, led by computer and information scientist H. Andrew Schwartz, to make predictions about the profile of each user.

The researchers found that they could predict a user’s gender with 92% accuracy. They could also guess a user’s age within three years more than half of the time.

To date, this is the largest study of its kind. Its magnitude allowed the researchers to use an “open-vocabulary approach”—that is, they let the data drive which words or phrases were considered most important. Most studies rely on a closed-vocabulary approach, using previously established lists of related words. That technique forces researchers to look at trait markers they already know, rather than discover new ones. Read more...

In a study published last week at PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania examined the language used in 75,000 Facebook profiles. They found differences across ages, genders and certain personality traits. This allowed the group, led by computer and information scientist H. Andrew Schwartz, to make predictions about the profile of each user.

The researchers found that they could predict a user’s gender with 92% accuracy. They could also guess a user’s age within three years more than half of the time.

To date, this is the largest study of its kind. Its magnitude allowed the researchers to use an “open-vocabulary approach”—that is, they let the data drive which words or phrases were considered most important. Most studies rely on a closed-vocabulary approach, using previously established lists of related words. That technique forces researchers to look at trait markers they already know, rather than discover new ones. Read more...

More about Facebook, Social Media, Online Presence, Personality, and Work Play]]>When Will Gene Therapy Come to the United States?http://mashable.com/2013/09/30/gene-therapy-united-states/
MIT Technology Reviewhttp://mashable.com/?p=2203381Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:11:37 +0000
]]>
HealthSciencePrescription DrugsGeneticsUs World

Though many gene therapies have been tested in patients around the world in hopes of curing hereditary diseases, few governments have approved their sale, and none has been approved in the United States. That could change in coming years as several therapies enter advanced trials.

A big step forward already came in November 2012, when the European Medicines Agency gave the Dutch biotech startup UniQure permission to sell its treatment. That approval came as a relief to many in the field, who had been waiting for a break in the clouds hanging over the technology since failed and fatal trials in the 1990s. “You see a resurgence in terms of investors, and in truth, a number of problems have been solved,” says Katherine High, a medical researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who is overseeing a late-stage clinical trial for a different gene therapy. Read more...

Though many gene therapies have been tested in patients around the world in hopes of curing hereditary diseases, few governments have approved their sale, and none has been approved in the United States. That could change in coming years as several therapies enter advanced trials.

A big step forward already came in November 2012, when the European Medicines Agency gave the Dutch biotech startup UniQure permission to sell its treatment. That approval came as a relief to many in the field, who had been waiting for a break in the clouds hanging over the technology since failed and fatal trials in the 1990s. “You see a resurgence in terms of investors, and in truth, a number of problems have been solved,” says Katherine High, a medical researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who is overseeing a late-stage clinical trial for a different gene therapy. Read more...

While computers have changed drastically over the past 20 years, morphing from big boxes to svelte laptops, touch-screen tablets and smartphones, the Web browsers we use on them have looked largely the same.

Sure, you can take a desktop Web browser, optimize it for a smaller screen and add some touch features — as the most commonly used mobile browsers do. But the results are often inelegant, because the things you do on a laptop or desktop computer tend to be different from the things you do on a tablet or smartphone. And chances are you’re not using a traditional keyboard and mouse, the tools that desktop-browser makers could count on you to have. Read more...

While computers have changed drastically over the past 20 years, morphing from big boxes to svelte laptops, touch-screen tablets and smartphones, the Web browsers we use on them have looked largely the same.

Sure, you can take a desktop Web browser, optimize it for a smaller screen and add some touch features — as the most commonly used mobile browsers do. But the results are often inelegant, because the things you do on a laptop or desktop computer tend to be different from the things you do on a tablet or smartphone. And chances are you’re not using a traditional keyboard and mouse, the tools that desktop-browser makers could count on you to have. Read more...

The Internet is disappearing. And with it goes an important part of our recorded history. That was the conclusion of a studyTechnology Review looked at last year, which measured the rate at which links shared over social media platforms, such as Twitter, were disappearing.

The conclusion was that this data is being lost at the rate of 11% within a year and 27% within two years.

Today, the researchers behind this work reveal that all is not lost. Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., have found a way to reconstruct deleted material, and they say it works reasonably well. Read more...

The Internet is disappearing. And with it goes an important part of our recorded history. That was the conclusion of a studyTechnology Review looked at last year, which measured the rate at which links shared over social media platforms, such as Twitter, were disappearing.

The conclusion was that this data is being lost at the rate of 11% within a year and 27% within two years.

Today, the researchers behind this work reveal that all is not lost. Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., have found a way to reconstruct deleted material, and they say it works reasonably well. Read more...

One well-known feature of social networks is that similar people tend to attract each other: birds of a feather flock together.

So an interesting question is whether these similarities cause people to behave in the same way online — whether it might lead to flocking or herding behavior, for example.

Today, we get an interesting insight into this phenomena thanks to the work of Rui Fan and colleagues at Beihang University in China. They have compared the way that tweets labeled with specific emotions influence other people on the network.

And their conclusion is surprising. They say the results clearly show that anger is more influential than other emotions such as joy or sadness, a finding that could have significant implications for our understanding of the way information spreads through social networks. Read more...

One well-known feature of social networks is that similar people tend to attract each other: birds of a feather flock together.

So an interesting question is whether these similarities cause people to behave in the same way online — whether it might lead to flocking or herding behavior, for example.

Today, we get an interesting insight into this phenomena thanks to the work of Rui Fan and colleagues at Beihang University in China. They have compared the way that tweets labeled with specific emotions influence other people on the network.

And their conclusion is surprising. They say the results clearly show that anger is more influential than other emotions such as joy or sadness, a finding that could have significant implications for our understanding of the way information spreads through social networks. Read more...

Nine years after Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard University to build Facebook, one of the university’s political science professors, Gary King, decided this year it was time to launch his own social media site. But King didn’t set up his Chinese social network to make money; instead, he wanted to get an insider’s view of Chinese censorship, which relies on Internet providers censoring their own sites in line with government guidelines. King won’t disclose his site’s URL, to protect people involved with his project.

Previous studies of Chinese censorship have mostly involved monitoring Chinese social sites to see which updates censors remove (see “Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to China’s Plans”). Some have relied on rare interviews with insiders willing to talk about their role in censorship. By contracting with a major Chinese provider of web software to help run his site, King could instead inspect the available censorship tools firsthand. He could also ask the company’s representatives whatever he wanted about how those tools should be used. “When we had questions, we just called customer service,” King says. Read more...

Nine years after Mark Zuckerberg quit Harvard University to build Facebook, one of the university’s political science professors, Gary King, decided this year it was time to launch his own social media site. But King didn’t set up his Chinese social network to make money; instead, he wanted to get an insider’s view of Chinese censorship, which relies on Internet providers censoring their own sites in line with government guidelines. King won’t disclose his site’s URL, to protect people involved with his project.

Previous studies of Chinese censorship have mostly involved monitoring Chinese social sites to see which updates censors remove (see “Social Media Censorship Offers Clues to China’s Plans”). Some have relied on rare interviews with insiders willing to talk about their role in censorship. By contracting with a major Chinese provider of web software to help run his site, King could instead inspect the available censorship tools firsthand. He could also ask the company’s representatives whatever he wanted about how those tools should be used. “When we had questions, we just called customer service,” King says. Read more...

Even though more than half of Americans own smartphones, a significant gap in broadband access persists in the United States, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The survey says 70% of American adults have broadband access in their homes, and a large proportion of those also have smartphones. An additional 10% of Americans get Internet access from smartphones alone

Yet with one in five Americans still lacking broadband, there’s a large deficit to be addressed. This can be done relatively inexpensively using a few wireless approaches. We could repurpose tge television spectrum, often called “Super Wi-Fi" to fill in the gap. Another way is to make clever use of unlicensed spectrum by new software-defined radiosRead more...

Even though more than half of Americans own smartphones, a significant gap in broadband access persists in the United States, according to a new survey released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The survey says 70% of American adults have broadband access in their homes, and a large proportion of those also have smartphones. An additional 10% of Americans get Internet access from smartphones alone

Yet with one in five Americans still lacking broadband, there’s a large deficit to be addressed. This can be done relatively inexpensively using a few wireless approaches. We could repurpose tge television spectrum, often called “Super Wi-Fi" to fill in the gap. Another way is to make clever use of unlicensed spectrum by new software-defined radiosRead more...

Mark Cerny’s soft voice and youthful looks belie the position of power he holds in the video-game industry. The 49-year-old Californian is the lead architect of Sony’s PlayStation 4, the company’s forthcoming video-game console cum entertainment hub, which is destined to arrive in millions of living rooms around the globe this winter

As such he is partly responsible for defining the next generation of video-game consoles and shaping the broader influence of these increasingly pervasive devices. It is a unique challenge in technological design. Unlike PCs, smartphones, or televisions, new video-game consoles launch only intermittently, every seven years or so. The design must be robust enough to remain relevant in a rapidly shifting technological landscape over an extended period. Read more...

Mark Cerny’s soft voice and youthful looks belie the position of power he holds in the video-game industry. The 49-year-old Californian is the lead architect of Sony’s PlayStation 4, the company’s forthcoming video-game console cum entertainment hub, which is destined to arrive in millions of living rooms around the globe this winter

As such he is partly responsible for defining the next generation of video-game consoles and shaping the broader influence of these increasingly pervasive devices. It is a unique challenge in technological design. Unlike PCs, smartphones, or televisions, new video-game consoles launch only intermittently, every seven years or so. The design must be robust enough to remain relevant in a rapidly shifting technological landscape over an extended period. Read more...

New software can now ID an animal's gender and age based just on a picture of a footprint.

This is how it works: Key elements uniquely identifying a footprint are marked on an image, as shown above with an Amur tiger print, prior to algorithmic classification.

Studying animal behavior in the wild usually starts with figuring out just where the wild animals are hiding. Field biologists can use a combination of methods for this, such as radio collars, aerial surveys, and camera traps to remotely monitor animal movement. However, to an expert eye, a well-preserved footprint can also reveal a surprising amount about an animal: its species, gender, age, even its individual identity. Read more...

New software can now ID an animal's gender and age based just on a picture of a footprint.

This is how it works: Key elements uniquely identifying a footprint are marked on an image, as shown above with an Amur tiger print, prior to algorithmic classification.

Studying animal behavior in the wild usually starts with figuring out just where the wild animals are hiding. Field biologists can use a combination of methods for this, such as radio collars, aerial surveys, and camera traps to remotely monitor animal movement. However, to an expert eye, a well-preserved footprint can also reveal a surprising amount about an animal: its species, gender, age, even its individual identity. Read more...

When Lavabit — an email service that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden used — suspended service last week amid hints that it had received a government demand for information, a competing service called Silent Circle made a draconian decision: to obliterate all of its customers' stored email.

The episode pointed out two fundamental weaknesses in email. First, even if an email service encrypts messages for secrecy, as Lavabit and Silent Circle did, the email headers and routing protocols reveal who the senders and receivers are, and that information can be valuable in its own right. And second, the passcodes used as keys to decrypt messages can be requested by the government (if held by the email company) or simply stolen by sophisticated malware. Read more...

When Lavabit — an email service that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden used — suspended service last week amid hints that it had received a government demand for information, a competing service called Silent Circle made a draconian decision: to obliterate all of its customers' stored email.

The episode pointed out two fundamental weaknesses in email. First, even if an email service encrypts messages for secrecy, as Lavabit and Silent Circle did, the email headers and routing protocols reveal who the senders and receivers are, and that information can be valuable in its own right. And second, the passcodes used as keys to decrypt messages can be requested by the government (if held by the email company) or simply stolen by sophisticated malware. Read more...

About 10 months ago, CEO of Tesla Motors and Space X Elon Musk asked some engineers from both companies to help him invent a new form of transportation. Yesterday, he unveiled the design for what he calls the "hyperloop," which would convey passengers from San Francisco to LA in about half an hour. It involves propelling 28-passenger "pods" through a tube at speeds of up to 760 miles per hour. The pods would be propelled by something called a linear motor, and they would ride on a cushion of air to minimize friction.

"It's far-fetched," says John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. "But Musk is a smart guy, so some of the things he's doing make reasonable sense." Read more...

About 10 months ago, CEO of Tesla Motors and Space X Elon Musk asked some engineers from both companies to help him invent a new form of transportation. Yesterday, he unveiled the design for what he calls the "hyperloop," which would convey passengers from San Francisco to LA in about half an hour. It involves propelling 28-passenger "pods" through a tube at speeds of up to 760 miles per hour. The pods would be propelled by something called a linear motor, and they would ride on a cushion of air to minimize friction.

"It's far-fetched," says John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. "But Musk is a smart guy, so some of the things he's doing make reasonable sense." Read more...

Asteroids that pass close to Earth have become the focus of increased attention in recent years, in part because of the potential threat they pose to humanity.

But they are also a potential boon. For decades, science fiction writers and various space scientists have pointed out that asteroids offer a huge untapped source of valuable resources.

Even if asteroid material is too expensive to bring home, it could provide the raw materials for rocket fuel and perhaps even rockets themselves to be manufactured in space. Many visionaries have greedily eyed these resources with the hope that a new gold rush is just around the corner. Read more...

Asteroids that pass close to Earth have become the focus of increased attention in recent years, in part because of the potential threat they pose to humanity.

But they are also a potential boon. For decades, science fiction writers and various space scientists have pointed out that asteroids offer a huge untapped source of valuable resources.

Even if asteroid material is too expensive to bring home, it could provide the raw materials for rocket fuel and perhaps even rockets themselves to be manufactured in space. Many visionaries have greedily eyed these resources with the hope that a new gold rush is just around the corner. Read more...

For the first time, researchers have implanted an electrode that can record neural activity while it simultaneously delivers electric current to the brain.

Minneapolis-based medical device company Medtronic developed the device, which can also adjust its electrical output in response to the changing conditions of the brain. This automated control could one day improve deep brain stimulation treatment and even enable doctors to use the device to treat more conditions, experts say.

More than 100,000 patients have received deep brain stimulation for treating movement problems associated with Parkinson's and other movement disorders. The treatment is also being explored for use with patients with epilepsy, severe depression and other brain disorders. The pacemaker-like devices deliver electric shocks to the brain to correct or prevent disruptive neuronal activity associated with symptoms of these conditions. With current devices, the pattern and strength of the electrical pulses must be preset by a specialist and then adjusted to meet a patient's needs. The new device from Medtronic and others currently in development could change that. Read more...

For the first time, researchers have implanted an electrode that can record neural activity while it simultaneously delivers electric current to the brain.

Minneapolis-based medical device company Medtronic developed the device, which can also adjust its electrical output in response to the changing conditions of the brain. This automated control could one day improve deep brain stimulation treatment and even enable doctors to use the device to treat more conditions, experts say.

More than 100,000 patients have received deep brain stimulation for treating movement problems associated with Parkinson's and other movement disorders. The treatment is also being explored for use with patients with epilepsy, severe depression and other brain disorders. The pacemaker-like devices deliver electric shocks to the brain to correct or prevent disruptive neuronal activity associated with symptoms of these conditions. With current devices, the pattern and strength of the electrical pulses must be preset by a specialist and then adjusted to meet a patient's needs. The new device from Medtronic and others currently in development could change that. Read more...

If you use a credit card or a cell phone, you probably receive a monthly statement detailing each purchase or call you have made. This may soon expand to your utility bills, too: A project in the works at electronics company Belkin makes it possible to see how much electricity you're spending on everything from the TV in your living room to the washing machine in your basement.

Called Belkin Echo Electricity, it's a small device that connects to your utility meter and pays attention to the electromagnetic interference, or "noise," emitted by electrical appliances plugged in to wall outlets. It is currently being tested in a handful of U.S. homes, and Belkin plans to install 10,000 of them over the next year in places ranging from military housing to apartments to hotels. Eventually, utilities could build the device into home meters or you could simply plug one into an outlet in your house. Read more...

If you use a credit card or a cell phone, you probably receive a monthly statement detailing each purchase or call you have made. This may soon expand to your utility bills, too: A project in the works at electronics company Belkin makes it possible to see how much electricity you're spending on everything from the TV in your living room to the washing machine in your basement.

Called Belkin Echo Electricity, it's a small device that connects to your utility meter and pays attention to the electromagnetic interference, or "noise," emitted by electrical appliances plugged in to wall outlets. It is currently being tested in a handful of U.S. homes, and Belkin plans to install 10,000 of them over the next year in places ranging from military housing to apartments to hotels. Eventually, utilities could build the device into home meters or you could simply plug one into an outlet in your house. Read more...

It has become the Internet's defining business model: free online services make their money by feeding on all the personal data generated by their users. Think Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, and how they serve targeted ads based on your preferences and interests, or make deals to share collected data with other companies.

Before the end of this year, Web users should be able to take a more active role in monetizing their personal data. Michael Fertik, cofounder and CEO of startup Reputation.com, says his company will launch a feature that lets users share certain personal information with other companies in return for discounts or other perks. Allowing airlines access to information about your income, for example, might lead to offers of loyalty points or an upgrade on your next flight. Read more...

It has become the Internet's defining business model: free online services make their money by feeding on all the personal data generated by their users. Think Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, and how they serve targeted ads based on your preferences and interests, or make deals to share collected data with other companies.

Before the end of this year, Web users should be able to take a more active role in monetizing their personal data. Michael Fertik, cofounder and CEO of startup Reputation.com, says his company will launch a feature that lets users share certain personal information with other companies in return for discounts or other perks. Allowing airlines access to information about your income, for example, might lead to offers of loyalty points or an upgrade on your next flight. Read more...

China's surveillance of its citizens' digital activities is common knowledge. However, questions remain concerning what content is targeted by government censors and how these blacklists change in response to current events.

A new study released this month in First Monday uncovers more than 4,000 unique keywords censored over the last year and a half on Chinese instant messaging platforms. Focusing on Skype and the microblogging service Sina Weibo, the researchers cultivated their keyword list using reverse-engineering techniques such as packet sniffing, which captures and analyzes packets of data as they pass through a network. Read more...

China's surveillance of its citizens' digital activities is common knowledge. However, questions remain concerning what content is targeted by government censors and how these blacklists change in response to current events.

A new study released this month in First Monday uncovers more than 4,000 unique keywords censored over the last year and a half on Chinese instant messaging platforms. Focusing on Skype and the microblogging service Sina Weibo, the researchers cultivated their keyword list using reverse-engineering techniques such as packet sniffing, which captures and analyzes packets of data as they pass through a network. Read more...

The Silicon Valley startup Morpheus Medical hopes to save lives by commercializing software for diagnosing heart failure from MRI scans. But because of trouble securing a visa, its dreams were nearly crushed last December.

"It would've been hard to continue the company if I had to go back to France," says Chief Innovation Officer Fabien Beckers, who had just helped three cofounders he met while at Stanford University land a $2 million investment. The new investors had put a condition on the term sheet: Before the funds came through, Beckers had to get a visa.

Beckers caught a break by winning a special three-year "genius" visa. But not everyone would be as lucky, so Beckers last year began talking about his story to the press and appearing in ads as part of an all-out lobbying campaign by the U.S. technology sector for looser immigration rules. Read more...

The Silicon Valley startup Morpheus Medical hopes to save lives by commercializing software for diagnosing heart failure from MRI scans. But because of trouble securing a visa, its dreams were nearly crushed last December.

"It would've been hard to continue the company if I had to go back to France," says Chief Innovation Officer Fabien Beckers, who had just helped three cofounders he met while at Stanford University land a $2 million investment. The new investors had put a condition on the term sheet: Before the funds came through, Beckers had to get a visa.

Beckers caught a break by winning a special three-year "genius" visa. But not everyone would be as lucky, so Beckers last year began talking about his story to the press and appearing in ads as part of an all-out lobbying campaign by the U.S. technology sector for looser immigration rules. Read more...

The days of going out and buying an electric car to demonstrate your steadfast devotion to the environment are coming to an end. Pretty soon, people might suspect you bought the car because you actually like it.

Already, we're well past the good old days, when electric car buyers could boast about sacrificing back seats to make room for the battery. People are getting word that some electric cars out there can out-accelerate a golf cart. Although you can still find one if you look, it's getting harder to find really weird-looking electric vehicles that scream, "There's no way I would have bought this if I didn't love the environment so much." Read more...

The days of going out and buying an electric car to demonstrate your steadfast devotion to the environment are coming to an end. Pretty soon, people might suspect you bought the car because you actually like it.

Already, we're well past the good old days, when electric car buyers could boast about sacrificing back seats to make room for the battery. People are getting word that some electric cars out there can out-accelerate a golf cart. Although you can still find one if you look, it's getting harder to find really weird-looking electric vehicles that scream, "There's no way I would have bought this if I didn't love the environment so much." Read more...

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, is one of the more extraordinary collective efforts of the crowd. Wikipedia's own estimate is that it has some 77,000 contributors working on more than 22 million articles in 285 languages. The largest edition — its English Wiki — alone offers more than 4 million articles.

So it's not surprising that disputes arise over the wording of these articles. Indeed, the controversy can sometimes reach warlike proportions with one editor changing the wording and another immediately changing it back again.

These edit wars can be used to identify controversial topics, but it's interesting to note how controversy varies across languages and cultures. Given its unique position that straddles multiple languages and cultures, Wikipedia is in the perfect position to provide some answers. Read more...

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, is one of the more extraordinary collective efforts of the crowd. Wikipedia's own estimate is that it has some 77,000 contributors working on more than 22 million articles in 285 languages. The largest edition — its English Wiki — alone offers more than 4 million articles.

So it's not surprising that disputes arise over the wording of these articles. Indeed, the controversy can sometimes reach warlike proportions with one editor changing the wording and another immediately changing it back again.

These edit wars can be used to identify controversial topics, but it's interesting to note how controversy varies across languages and cultures. Given its unique position that straddles multiple languages and cultures, Wikipedia is in the perfect position to provide some answers. Read more...

The Serval project, whose free software can enable smartphones to make calls and send messages without a cellular network, is appealing for help developing a home router-like device that could make its novel approach more practical

Potentially just as important, the device also makes it possible for nearby phones to join a mesh network without being modified to sidestep default restrictions on Wi-Fi networking in Google's mobile operating system. The current prototype is pictured at left in the image above, while the Serval project's founder, Paul Gardner-Stephen, holds a mockup of a more refined version. Read more...

The Serval project, whose free software can enable smartphones to make calls and send messages without a cellular network, is appealing for help developing a home router-like device that could make its novel approach more practical

Potentially just as important, the device also makes it possible for nearby phones to join a mesh network without being modified to sidestep default restrictions on Wi-Fi networking in Google's mobile operating system. The current prototype is pictured at left in the image above, while the Serval project's founder, Paul Gardner-Stephen, holds a mockup of a more refined version. Read more...

EBay dips its toes into the 3D-printing pool with an iPhone app that lets users customize accessories.

EBay announced Friday that it is getting into 3D printing with a new iPhone app called eBay Exact that lets users customize jewelry and accessories that will then be 3D printed and sent to them. Functionally, it's not mind-blowing, yet it shows just how far 3D printing has come in the past few years and gives a hint of where it could go next

The app is pretty simple: Once you open it up, you see several items from 3D printing companies MakerBot, Sculpteo and Hot Pop Factory: mostly jewelry and iPhone cases, plus a few other items. You pick an item (I chose the Platonix necklace, available through Hot Pop Factory), and then modify a few features like the pattern, material, shape or color. (Some items can't actually be modified at all.) Read more...

EBay dips its toes into the 3D-printing pool with an iPhone app that lets users customize accessories.

EBay announced Friday that it is getting into 3D printing with a new iPhone app called eBay Exact that lets users customize jewelry and accessories that will then be 3D printed and sent to them. Functionally, it's not mind-blowing, yet it shows just how far 3D printing has come in the past few years and gives a hint of where it could go next

The app is pretty simple: Once you open it up, you see several items from 3D printing companies MakerBot, Sculpteo and Hot Pop Factory: mostly jewelry and iPhone cases, plus a few other items. You pick an item (I chose the Platonix necklace, available through Hot Pop Factory), and then modify a few features like the pattern, material, shape or color. (Some items can't actually be modified at all.) Read more...

Last month Siemens and EADS demonstrated a new gas-electric vehicle capable of carrying two people and their luggage 900 kilometers — roughly the distance from New York to Detroit — between refuels and recharges. The prototype was not a car, but a small two-seater airplane.

The hybrid plane is similar to the Chevrolet Volt in that it relies on an electric motor and uses a gas engine as backup. The airplane matches the performance of some private airplanes already on the market, but it has two distinct advantages: It is remarkably quiet and uses about 25% less fuel.

The achievement presages what is likely to be a big shift toward hybrid propulsion in airplanes. Several major corporations envision a future in which airplanes rely at least in part on electric propulsion. Although the technology will be applied to small planes at first, eventually it could help reduce noise and emissions from airliners. Read more...

Last month Siemens and EADS demonstrated a new gas-electric vehicle capable of carrying two people and their luggage 900 kilometers — roughly the distance from New York to Detroit — between refuels and recharges. The prototype was not a car, but a small two-seater airplane.

The hybrid plane is similar to the Chevrolet Volt in that it relies on an electric motor and uses a gas engine as backup. The airplane matches the performance of some private airplanes already on the market, but it has two distinct advantages: It is remarkably quiet and uses about 25% less fuel.

The achievement presages what is likely to be a big shift toward hybrid propulsion in airplanes. Several major corporations envision a future in which airplanes rely at least in part on electric propulsion. Although the technology will be applied to small planes at first, eventually it could help reduce noise and emissions from airliners. Read more...

For 50 years, people have tried to figure out what makes Silicon Valley tick.

By 1960, Silicon Valley had already captured the attention of the world as a teeming technology center. It had spawned the microwave electronics industry and set a pattern for industry academic partnerships. French president Charles de Gaulle paid a visit and marveled at its sprawling research parks set amid farms and orchards south of San Francisco.

Stanford University, which is at the heart of Silicon Valley, had given birth to leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, Watkins-Johnson and Applied Technologies. These companies were pushing the frontiers of technology. There was clearly something unusual happening here — in innovation and entrepreneurship. Read more...

For 50 years, people have tried to figure out what makes Silicon Valley tick.

By 1960, Silicon Valley had already captured the attention of the world as a teeming technology center. It had spawned the microwave electronics industry and set a pattern for industry academic partnerships. French president Charles de Gaulle paid a visit and marveled at its sprawling research parks set amid farms and orchards south of San Francisco.

Stanford University, which is at the heart of Silicon Valley, had given birth to leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, Watkins-Johnson and Applied Technologies. These companies were pushing the frontiers of technology. There was clearly something unusual happening here — in innovation and entrepreneurship. Read more...

Astrophysicists believe our galaxy must be filled with more dark matter than ordinary matter. Now, astronomers say they can find no evidence of dark matter’s gravitational influence on the planets. What gives?

Astronomers have a problem. Whenever they study the large scale structure of the universe, it soon becomes clear that the amount of visible matter cannot possibly generate enough gravity to hold together the structures they can see. Things like galaxy clusters and even galaxies themselves ought to fly apart given the amount of ordinary matter they contain.

Something else must be holding these things together. So astronomers have dreamed up the idea of dark matter — mysterious, invisible and non-interacting stuff that fills the universe, generating the gravity necessary to hold everything together. Read more...

Astrophysicists believe our galaxy must be filled with more dark matter than ordinary matter. Now, astronomers say they can find no evidence of dark matter’s gravitational influence on the planets. What gives?

Astronomers have a problem. Whenever they study the large scale structure of the universe, it soon becomes clear that the amount of visible matter cannot possibly generate enough gravity to hold together the structures they can see. Things like galaxy clusters and even galaxies themselves ought to fly apart given the amount of ordinary matter they contain.

Something else must be holding these things together. So astronomers have dreamed up the idea of dark matter — mysterious, invisible and non-interacting stuff that fills the universe, generating the gravity necessary to hold everything together. Read more...

Former Enron executive Vincent Kaminski is a modest, semi-retired business school professor from Houston who recently wrote a 960-page book explaining the fundamentals of energy markets. His most lasting legacy, however, may involve thousands of emails he wrote more than a decade ago at the energy services company.

Kaminski, who warned repeatedly about concerning practices he saw at Enron, is among more than 150 senior executives whose email boxes were dumped onto the Internet by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on March 26, 2003. In the name of serving the public’s interest during its investigation of Enron, the federal agency made the controversial decision to post online more than 1.6 million emails that Enron executives sent and received from 2000 through 2002 Read more...

Former Enron executive Vincent Kaminski is a modest, semi-retired business school professor from Houston who recently wrote a 960-page book explaining the fundamentals of energy markets. His most lasting legacy, however, may involve thousands of emails he wrote more than a decade ago at the energy services company.

Kaminski, who warned repeatedly about concerning practices he saw at Enron, is among more than 150 senior executives whose email boxes were dumped onto the Internet by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on March 26, 2003. In the name of serving the public’s interest during its investigation of Enron, the federal agency made the controversial decision to post online more than 1.6 million emails that Enron executives sent and received from 2000 through 2002 Read more...

As mobile computers have become more common, criminals have begun to explore ways to profit from exploiting them. However, figures released Wednesday by mobile security company Lookout indicate that people are more likely to fall victim to what it calls “adware” than classic criminal malware.

Lookout sampled 200,000 apps to conclude that 6.5% of all free apps in the store for Android devices meet the company’s definition of adware, broadly defined as any app that pushes ads on a user outside of its own interface without consent. Adware might use notifications or add icons to the device homescreen. Read more...

As mobile computers have become more common, criminals have begun to explore ways to profit from exploiting them. However, figures released Wednesday by mobile security company Lookout indicate that people are more likely to fall victim to what it calls “adware” than classic criminal malware.

Lookout sampled 200,000 apps to conclude that 6.5% of all free apps in the store for Android devices meet the company’s definition of adware, broadly defined as any app that pushes ads on a user outside of its own interface without consent. Adware might use notifications or add icons to the device homescreen. Read more...

Apple advised iPhone and iPad apps to stop logging the unique identifiers of users’ devices in 2011. It's a practice that can be exploited to build up profiles for ad-targeting purposes. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, suggests that many apps still do so.

At the MobiSys conference in Taiwan this week, the researchers will present data gathered from 225,000 apps installed on 90,000 ordinary iPhones. Their analysis shows that between February 2012 and December 2012, 48% of those apps accessed the unique device ID, or UDID, of the phone they were installed on. The full paper is available online (PDF). Read more...

Apple advised iPhone and iPad apps to stop logging the unique identifiers of users’ devices in 2011. It's a practice that can be exploited to build up profiles for ad-targeting purposes. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, suggests that many apps still do so.

At the MobiSys conference in Taiwan this week, the researchers will present data gathered from 225,000 apps installed on 90,000 ordinary iPhones. Their analysis shows that between February 2012 and December 2012, 48% of those apps accessed the unique device ID, or UDID, of the phone they were installed on. The full paper is available online (PDF). Read more...

One of the growing concerns for human rights campaigners is the increasing evidence of Internet censorship in many repressive regimes around the world. During the Arab spring, for example, Egyptian leaders "switched off" the Internet in an attempt to prevent activists from organizing protests or communicating with the outside world. The Syrian leadership appears to have done a similar thing on several occasions during the current civil war.

But in Iran, the government is pioneering a more insidious — though equally powerful — form of censorship. Instead of shutting down Internet access, the government appears to be dramatically slowing its performance during periods of unrest. In February 2010, for example, the technology news website, The Next Web, recorded this effect in a story titled, "The Internet In Iran Is Crawling, Conveniently, Right Before Planned Protests." Read more...

One of the growing concerns for human rights campaigners is the increasing evidence of Internet censorship in many repressive regimes around the world. During the Arab spring, for example, Egyptian leaders "switched off" the Internet in an attempt to prevent activists from organizing protests or communicating with the outside world. The Syrian leadership appears to have done a similar thing on several occasions during the current civil war.

But in Iran, the government is pioneering a more insidious — though equally powerful — form of censorship. Instead of shutting down Internet access, the government appears to be dramatically slowing its performance during periods of unrest. In February 2010, for example, the technology news website, The Next Web, recorded this effect in a story titled, "The Internet In Iran Is Crawling, Conveniently, Right Before Planned Protests." Read more...